


Area Riservata

by manic_intent



Category: John Wick (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Prison, Italian System, M/M, Mentions of Suicide, That Prison AU where both John and Santino are in the same prison
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-02
Updated: 2017-08-02
Packaged: 2018-12-10 09:20:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11688678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manic_intent/pseuds/manic_intent
Summary: Santino always woke up struggling for air. The walls of his cell closing in, crushing him into the present. He was shaky as he got to his feet, closing his eyes, stretching out his hands. He counted the steps to the opposite wall. Then he walked until his back was to the cell door, and counted the steps to the next well. He pressed his head against concrete, breathing in, then out. The walls snapped back into place, appeased by ritual. Santino lay back on his bed, folding his hands over his chest.Prison stank.It was an unrelenting stink of men crowded into tiny cells for the rest of their lives. Sweat, flatulence, body odour, vomit. Prison perfume. Santino breathed it in. Out. Choked it down. It grounded him in the mornings. People were beginning to stir. Everyone was quiet, save for those who murmured greetings to their neighbours, the words shredded away through concrete.





	Area Riservata

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt 8: Prison (Roommate) AU 
> 
> I somehow wasn’t expecting this one, haha. I’ve actually already done Prison Roommate before, for TMFU, and in that one, I’ve pretty much already discussed a lot of what I wanted to say about American incarceration. The Italian system, on the other hand, has its own interesting quirks: there’s actually a part of the penal code for the mafia. 
> 
> Article 41-bis is Italy’s “hard prison regime”, and is pretty much an institutionalised sort of permanent solitary confinement aimed at breaking the chain of command between Mafia bosses and their clans. It was held to breach 2 articles of the European Convention of Human Rights in 2007. So technically they aren't roommates since that's not possible, but the closest approximation.

Santino always woke up struggling for air. The walls of his cell closing in, crushing him into the present. He was shaky as he got to his feet, closing his eyes, stretching out his hands. He counted the steps to the opposite wall. Then he walked until his back was to the cell door, and counted the steps to the next well. He pressed his head against concrete, breathing in, then out. The walls snapped back into place, appeased by ritual. Santino lay back on his bed, folding his hands over his chest. 

Prison stank. 

It was an unrelenting stink of men crowded into tiny cells for the rest of their lives. Sweat, flatulence, body odour, vomit. Prison perfume. Santino breathed it in. Out. Choked it down. It grounded him in the mornings. People were beginning to stir. Everyone was quiet, save for those who murmured greetings to their neighbours, the words shredded away through concrete.

Santino used the toilet in the cell, washing his face in the sink. Everything was under surveillance here. Even the shower. It had felt intrusive at first, and then he had been indifferent. When solitude felt at its most crushing Santino would look up to where the camera was and remember that he was not really alone. Sometimes that helped. Today it made him shaky. He sat on the bed with the book.

The book wasn’t his. Like the others in 41-bis, his personal effects were limited to four sets of underwear, four socks, two shirts, two pairs of shoes, two pants, and two jackets. Other than that, there couldn’t be more than 30 items in his cell, though this maximum limit was often arbitrary, limited to warden whimsy. 

Toothbrush, toothpaste, toilet paper, already three. A comb was an item of vanity that Santino had long learned to forgo many gray days ago. Soap. Paper. Pencils. Now six. Pillow and blanket, eight. Necessities pared down quickly, the first lesson Santino had to learn, one that a life born into wealth had never begun to teach him. Cigarettes and a lighter were two items of luxury that Santino currently had, a reward for good behaviour. The rest of his inventory were books. 

To live life in 41-bis was to live a life of vendetta. Especially in the restricted area, the 41-bis within 41-bis, mostly reserved for mafia bosses. The most extreme part of the regime. The Italian State’s vendetta, against what the newspapers sometimes liked to call Italy’s ‘original sin’. Cutting off the heads of the snakes from the bodies. Santino understood. The war between the carabinieri and the mafia had been waged for decades. Longer. The mafia had always been here. Before Italy had been Italy. In a never-ending war there was no room for niceties like rights. But if it was to be vendetta then stubbornness was in his blood. 

Breakfast came and went. Santino listened to the cart rattling along, the occasional murmured greetings. Some cells chose silence. One of the greatest bosses of the System was in here, not that Santino had or would ever see him. Paolo di Lauro, nicknamed _Ciruzzo o’ milionario_. It was said that he had chosen absolute silence, spending his days smoking. He could turn evidence for the State for a better life. Instead he chose to wait for death, refusing even phone calls to his wife, disciplined to the bitter end. 

Santino couldn’t do that. Not yet. He smoked, and read. The books were mostly chosen for him by the guards. Early on, when they did not know him, they had been ironic about it. Gospel song books, the Bible, shit like that. Santino read them anyway. It was the first time he had read the Bible. He memorised psalms, amused by their poetry. He read and reread the Old Testament, which was surprisingly bloody, imagined the army surrounding Jericho, Moses hiding his face from the burning bush. The Flood. 

Now he got two books of choice and the rest were often random. The last batch included Saviano’s Gomorrah, which Santino supposed was some warden’s idea of high humour. If it was meant to shame him it hadn’t worked. Someday Saviano’s keepers would make a mistake and he would die, the inevitable end of anyone who crossed the System on such a scale. Santino was reading the book slowly, and he was enjoying it. After all, he knew most of the clans that were named. 

Besides, the stack of books was an expression of sympathy, of sorts. In his 30s, Santino knew he was one of the youngest kept in the restricted area. At the beginning, after his high profile arrest, the days had been tough. Empty days trying to get used to privation, no books, a difficult companion, chosen by the wardens. 

Now the days were a little easier and there were books, but the companion couldn’t be changed. 

John Wick was a freelancer, a hitman for hire who had once worked for the highest bidder. Outside the prison he was _l’uomo nero_ , the bogeyman. Inside the prison he was just ‘the American’. Santino still didn’t know why he was here. Was prison harder in America? Santino wasn’t sure, but he couldn’t imagine that. America had once refused to extradite someone to Italy in case he had to live in 41-bis. Somehow the American remained here, quietly forgotten. It was easy to see why. The man was like a ghost. 

Life in the hard prison regime meant 22 hours in solitary, one hour of sun, one hour with the companion. Generally, they walked around a tiny yard, the only close human contact permitted. Sometimes the American didn’t bother to leave his cell. When he did, he didn’t talk. Wouldn’t look at Santino either. He stared at the walls like a caged creature, tall and pale, with unkempt dark hair and sideburns. They would be watched. 

Santino talked, because on the second night of prison he’d had a vivid dream where he had forgotten how to speak, silenced forever, and it had frightened him. Usually he just recited paragraphs from the books he had memorised. Perks of a near-photographic memory.

This morning the ‘Women’ chapter of Gomorrah had made Santino a little melancholy. He repeated the paragraph he had liked, one that reminded him of Gianna. His sister was still out there. A System woman, the true centre of the family clan, like their mother before her, like their grandmother before that. It was purely a matter of business: the women in his clan had simply been better at it. The men were middle management, the fronts, Santino included. The prosecutore had gotten _that_ wrong, when they had caught and sentenced Santino. Or maybe they hadn’t cared. One less Camorristi on the street. 

“And?” 

Santino flinched. This was the first time he’d ever heard John speak. “What?” 

“You stopped halfway.” John’s voice was hoarse, pitched low. He spoke Italian with an ugly accent. 

Santino hadn’t even realized that John had ever been listening. He’d trailed off, trying to remember when he had last spoken to Gianna. Time passed strangely in prison, especially in the restricted area. Life without parole meant losing track of time, the days, the years, the remainder of your time on earth stolen forever and ground into concrete. 

“Where did I stop?” Santino asked. He knew where he had stopped, but conversation was so novel that he could not help but ask. 

John tilted his head. “Anna Mazza.” 

“Black Widow of the Camorra,” Santino said. “Moccia clan.” They had known the Moccia clan, though the alliance had been tentative. 

“Did a job for them once.” John said, to Santino’s surprise. He was breaking the unspoken pact. No one here talked business. To be seen as a braggart or worse, a snitch, was to be no longer worthy of respect. John looked indifferent, as though he was merely describing the colour of the sky. “Go on.” When Santino was quiet, he added, absently, “Please.” 

“Ah.” Put on the spot, Santino momentarily forgot what came next. “The important decisions, both military and economic, were up to the black widow.” Santino talked until time ran out, self-conscious. When it was time to be escorted back to their cells, John went without a word. 

The walk back to his cell was another ritual, one of greeting. Every cell he walked past meant an exchange of greetings. Santino had long memorised the names of all the others on his row. It was an efficient ritual, one that the guards tolerated. A ritual of non-aggression was better than the alternative. Santino was tired by the time he got back to his cell. 

He wondered if John bothered with the ritual. Any ritual. Probably not. Like _Ciruzzo o’ milionario_ , the American had until today exuded a monkish indifference to the world. Santino had thought it an effect of the regime. It was made to break people down for the State. It did break people, but people were complicated. They often broke in unexpected and messy directions.

#

Morning. Someone had died in the night.

Through the food slot Santino had caught a glimpse of the dead man. It was the supine bulk of _’o toro_ that had been carried past, Giovanni Valentino, the boss of a small, rival clan. They had met once in the corridors, and, according to ritual, had been carefully polite. His tongue was protruding, his neck twisted. The old man had managed to hang himself. 

Santino lay back on his bed, curiosity satisfied. Suicides weren’t uncommon. The compression of the walls compressed the mind in turn. There was a man on his row during the early days who used to cry at midnight. Small sobbing gasps, like a broken animal. Santino hadn’t ever managed to learn his name. He’d died ten days into Santino’s sentence. The cell was empty when Santino had been walked to the yard, a new, dull stain on the floor that hadn’t quite been washed out. 

Breakfast. Santino finished reading the ‘Women’ chapter, far too conscious that he actually did have an audience. He found himself repeating the paragraphs in his mind, checking for inconsistencies. Then he scowled to himself. Several cells down, someone was singing. Usually it wasn’t much of a distraction. Today Santino pinned his pillow over his head and stared at the book. Then he sighed, closed it, and picked up another book at random.

In the yard, John said nothing when Santino recited a paragraph from The Prisoner’s Wife. Another guard’s idea of a joke, probably. He was quiet until it was nearly time, then, when Santino paused for breath, John said, “I like this book more.”

“You were listening,” Santino said, then wished he hadn’t spoken. It was obvious that John had been listening. “You could ask for books.” 

“I don’t get books.”

Santino stared. He nearly asked, but the ritual of silence made him hold his tongue. “That’s. Unfortunate,” he decided, delicately. 

“They’re waiting for me to die.” John said, still indifferent.

“An American dying in an Italian prison, isn’t that going to be an international incident?” 

“Not in my case.” 

“Everyone knows about you,” Santino said, then he hesitated. Everyone in the System knew about _l’uomo nero_. That didn’t mean that the public did. Or cared. Or maybe AISI had kept things quiet, somehow. Santino hadn’t even heard much of how _l’uomo nero_ had come to be caught in the first place. 

“That’s why.” John sucked in a breath. “Issue for everyone. FBI thinks I’ll be less of a problem in here.” 

“You don’t look like a problem,” Santino said, wondering if that comment technically broke the ritual. He would have heard, surely, if _l’uomo nero_ was troubling the guards. John stayed quiet. Time to go.

#

Ares made the long trek once a month to the island prison for the ‘family’ visit, pretending to be Santino’s girlfriend. Technically, she was his consigliere, which made this a stupid risk, in a way, but Ares was confident, Gianna obviously couldn’t be here, and the carabinieri hadn’t figured out who Ares really was yet. Maybe it was because she was pretty and female, blonde and mute. Even the carabinieri had blind spots.

At least they could sign through the thick glass, forgoing the phone system. The phones for the glass were always broken, and there were usually others in the room, having to shout through the phone to their visitor. Cacophony. Santino wasn’t sure if the carabinieri still reviewed the tapes, but it was best to err on caution. 

They talked in code, reviewing business until the end. It wasn’t necessary, of course, they both knew that. Gianna had things well in hand. But it kept Santino sane. The last fence before despair. 

-Gianna is well,- Ares signed. -Expecting her first child.-

-She left that late,- Santino replied. He found that he was pleased. -Boy? Or a girl?-

-She would prefer a girl.- Ares smiled. A heir to the throne. -One to help her tend the flowers in the garden.-

-Women do tend to be better with flowers.- It was inevitable that the power centres of the modern Camorra clans were increasingly matriarchal. 

-You have to be careful with gardeners,- Ares signed. -Sometimes they are bad for the garden. Even if they don’t always like to talk.- 

So Gianna had somehow heard of the incident in the practice yard. -I wouldn’t worry.- Which of the guards were on her payroll? Santino hadn’t even noticed. Not that it mattered. A restricted area sentence was forever. He would die behind concrete even if he became sick enough to need a hospital. What could John do, kill him? That would just end his sentence earlier rather than later.

#

Santino started to look forward to the yard walk. John didn’t always talk. It became a trade, of sorts. If Santino read from a book that John liked, he usually made a comment. At first Santino had rebelled. He’d tried a day where he had also spent the hour in silence. Then days when he’d recited only psalms. But rebellion was pointless against the indifferent. John wasn’t even trying to manipulate him. It wasn’t complicated. If John liked the book, he would talk.

“Sounds like a bit of a dick,” John said, when Santino finished reciting a chapter from The Prince. 

“Who?”

“Guy who wrote that book.”

“It’s Machiavelli.” Santino frowned at John. “It’s a classic.” 

“So? Kipling was probably a dick. His books are classics.”

“You’ve _read_ Kipling?” 

“I can read.” John looked mildly surprised that Santino had even asked. “How is this weird?” 

“What’s your favourite book?” Santino asked, suspicious. 

John didn’t even hesitate. “The God of Small Things.”

“Never heard of that one.” 

John glanced away, up at the sky. “‘The secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don’t surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover’s skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don’t.’” He stopped, breathing hard, as though exhausted from the effort of speaking. Of memory.

It was the most number of words Santino had ever heard from John, all at once, and it shocked him into silence. Prose had always had a way of shattering misconceptions.

#

Curiosity was like a disease. It worked its way into your lungs and then it ate you up from the inside. Reluctantly, Santino made a request for The God of Small Things. Books were exchanged, old for new. Someone had felt kindly towards him today, or perhaps one of the guards was also a secret fan of highbrow literature: the new stack of books had both The God of Small Things and the author’s latest book, a thick slab with a white cover that looked like vagrant masonry. The Ministry of Utmost Happiness.

Or perhaps it was another joke.

Santino tried it first, and was quickly absorbed. He forgot to try and read slowly. Prose also always had a way of consuming the unwary. During the yard hour, he tried not to look smug, grinning as John walked over to him. “Did you know she had a second book? That author you liked.” 

“No.” 

“’At magic hour, when the sun has gone but the light has not—’” Santino cut himself off when John looked away sharply, towards the wall. “John?”

John shuddered. He stared at his feet as they walked. Finally, he said thickly, “You’re the first person to say my name in years.” 

Santino nodded slowly. The guards preferred the impersonality of numbers. Surprise pushed him to break with ritual. “Why are you here?” John didn’t look up. “If the carabinieri had come after you they would have taken casualties. They didn’t. I heard that you turned yourself in. Walked into a precinct.” 

“I did.”

“Why?” Santino said, mystified. “Surely you would have known about the regime. Or if you were extradited, you’d have gone to a supermax in America.” 

“I got tired.” 

“Then retire. You could have lived somewhere quietly.” 

John shook his head, baring his teeth. His eyes were closed. He shuddered again. “Had to be sure. That I wouldn’t kill again.” 

Santino blinked. “Did it work?” he blurted out. Then he flushed. Of course it would have. John was a prisoner, watched 24/7. 

John exhaled, staring back at his feet. “No.” He walked straight towards the single exit of the yard, knocking on the door until the guards came. He spoke quietly to them as Santino stared across the yard, and was taken away.

#

It took Santino a week to finish the book and in that week John refused to leave his cell. Santino was briefly assigned someone else, a nervy, quiet guy from another row who only liked to talk about old Italian singers. It _was_ more conversation than Santino usually got, which he enjoyed, at least at first, even though he had no interest in the topic.

Curiosity remained a disease. But it wasn’t as though Santino had any means of finding out what happened to John. The guards weren’t interested in gossiping.

Two weeks later the nervy guy was gone and John was back. He was silent again. Santino hadn’t prepared anything new to recite, so he cautiously went off a jumble of paragraphs from the second book, too disconcerted for sequence. John’s expression was blank, but Santino could tell that he was listening. It took two weeks before curiosity left Santino little further choice but to ask his questions. 

“That day when you left. Did I offend you?”

John tilted his head, as though considering whether to even speak. Finally, he grunted. “No.” 

“So why did you leave?” Santino waited, but John didn’t speak. He changed tack. “Who did you kill in here?” 

“The last guy?” 

“There was more than one?” 

John ignored the question. “Last guy was the guy assigned to me for the yard.” 

Santino stiffened. “And the one before that?”

“Yard.” Where else would John have the opportunity? 

“The guards didn’t intervene?”

“They were just too slow at the start.” John paused. “Then they started just putting people in with me whom they wanted to get rid of. I’m already in here for life. I kill someone, they add it to my sentence, nobody has to inconveniently fall down any stairs.” 

Santino was incredulous. “But that’s… but what…” The guards had never shown any particular hostility to him. At least, not since the beginning… ah… so that was it. Companions could not be reassigned under normal circumstances. 

“I don’t want to kill you,” John said simply. 

“Then don’t…?”

“You kinda. Get a taste for it.” John glanced up at the sky, hands loose at his side. “That’s why I turned myself in. I thought they’d put me down. Or lock me up where I can’t do it anymore.” He let out a strangled, coughing sound. “Funny how that worked out.”

“I don’t think you’re going to kill me,” Santino said, compressing conviction into every word. When John stared at him, Santino gambled. “At least not until I get to the end of this book.” 

“… Yeah,” John conceded. He looked back up at the sky. “It’s usually quick.”

“What is?”

“When I kill someone.”

It took all of Santino’s self-control to smile and shrug and go back to the book. He’d have to get a message to his sister.

#

A week passed after Ares’ visit, and Santino wasn’t sure what he had been hoping for. File an appeal? He wasn’t exactly innocent of his charges, just not guilty of some of them. Use paid-for guards? That wasn’t going to be possible. Santino resigned himself to whatever would come. At least the uncertain nature of his impending doom had energised the gray days. He wasn’t even afraid, or that bitter about it. It would be an end to endlessness.

Santino was stumbling over the pronunciation of a song transcribed in the book when John glanced sharply up at the sky and to his left. Then Santino heard it. The growing churn of helicopter blades. Some millionaire’s fun little jaunt had strayed too close to the island, maybe. The roar grew louder, and louder yet. There were shouts. The door to the yard opened, and guards started to come out, only to flinch back through the door as something stitched over the ground in front of them. Behind Santino was the staccato roar of a machine gun. 

Shocked, he could only stare as a rope ladder uncurled and nearly hit him on the head. It was John who grabbed him by the shoulder and shoved him towards it. Santino climbed, expecting to be shot at any moment. He looked down. John stared up, glancing between him and the open door. He was thinking of attacking the guards? Barehanded? Santino beckoned urgently, and John narrowed his eyes. The guards were shooting, oddly wildly. Taken by surprise?

No. Paid for. His sister’s plans were always so brutally elegant.

“The book’s not finished!” Santino yelled down, before he could decide not to. The helicopter was turning, banking away. At the last possible moment, John caught the end of the rope ladder, swarming up. 

Santino was panting by the time hands hauled him up onto the deck of the helicopter. Ares had been in the gunnery seat, and she grinned as he embraced her tightly. Then she stared curiously at John, who stared back. -He’s a friend,- Santino signed. 

-I know who he is. I hope you know what you’re doing,- Ares replied, then, -your sister isn’t going to like this.- 

-I’ll deal with her,- Santino signed, sitting down beside John against the flank of the helicopter. John stared at his feet, quiet as they landed on a remote spit of land and were packed into waiting cars. 

“I should’ve stayed,” John said, once they were on the road, Ares driving. He didn’t even look out of the window. 

“But you didn’t.” Santino patted John’s thigh, and when John didn’t move, he leaned closer, grinning. Even now, death held no fear for him. “Why not?” 

“The book isn’t finished.” John’s eyes flicked from Santino’s eyes to his mouth, his lips briefly parting. “You shouldn’t have—” He stopped when Santino pressed fingers against his mouth.

“I do what I like.” Santino said. John watched him, solemn and quiet. “And once you get to know me better,” Santino said, gambling again, grinning, “perhaps you’d be willing to do what I want.”

John kissed Santino’s fingertips. When Santino didn’t pull his hand away, fingers carefully circled his wrist, turning his hand knuckles up. Lips brushed just below the ridge, where a signet ring would sit, a ritual that was older than that of silence.

**Author's Note:**

> https://medium.com/@EmanueleMidolo/the-hard-prison-regime-in-italy-questioned-after-the-death-of-bernardo-provenzano-mafia-boss-of-16ced7d4528b
> 
> http://www.academia.edu/28648579/Actually_lifers_in_Italy_a_convict_prospective_41bis_an_Italian_way_of_mandatory_life_and_long-term_solitary_confinement
> 
> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/16/how-albert-woodfox-survived-solitary
> 
> You can actually find video of somebody escaping prison in a helicopter on the internet, which I find pretty amazing, lol. Damn. http://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2016/03/16/canada-prison-inmate-helicopter-escape-surveillance-footage-pkg.ctv-network/video/playlists/killers-escape-maximum-security-prison/
> 
> About nicknames: Google translate tells me that 'o toro is grammatically weird, so either Gomorrah's nicknames were mistranslated somehow (people in it are called 'o mago, etc) or it's Neapolitan grammar, idk.  
> \--  
> twitter: manic_intent  
> tumblr: manic-intent


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